A blog

Vulnerability

March 31, 2012

I’ve been on a journey the last few months that really started for me at an event called Men at the Cross (crossmg.org/matc.php) It’s been a predominant theme in a lot of my thoughts and interactions with people since then, and today a friend of mine posted a TED talk on facebook that just reinforces it all.

I’ve always been taught that true community only comes when people are open with one another. Light-hearted expressions like “nudity builds community” have been tossed out and hopes of “authentic community” have been expressed by participants of various groups in which I’ve been a part. But it wasn’t until the weekend at Men at the Cross where I really experienced how quickly and easily true community can be created when people are given a safe place where they can have the courage to be vulnerable.

Brown doesn’t go into a lot about where this shame and fear come from or why everyone experiences it. How sad that the scientific community is no longer allowed to use ideas like ‘sin’ because it, more than any other theory, completely explains the feeling of not “measuring up” that is universal to humankind.

The answer to this issue that Brown comes up with is for people to “believe” that they are worthy of love and connection. But she doesn’t really give any concrete evidence about why we should believe that. Naturalism doesn’t give any evidence for it, in fact it gives just the opposite: that eventually those people who fail to have this mentality actually aren’t worthy of it and will just get bred out of existence. But religion does give evidence for why we humans are worthy of love, and I believe Jesus gave the most succinct evidence when he said, For God so loved the world that He gave is only son. We are worthy of love because God loves us.

In fact, no other worldview fits the reality that we see around us as well as does the one that says we are all broken individuals who cannot experiencing the abundant life we were meant for until we recognize that we are worthy of it simply because God loves us.